


Bane Family Bakery

by acidtonguejenny



Series: Improbably Fluffy Bakery AU [1]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidtonguejenny/pseuds/acidtonguejenny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bane the baker has a meet cute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bane Family Bakery

He spends his days covered nearly head to toe in flour. It’s par for the course when you own or otherwise inhabit a bakery for upwards of ten hours a day, and Bane’s never seen the point in worrying about it.

That is, until Tuesday. Eleven in the morning, long after the AM rush and before the noon surge, the bell above the door rings. His nephew Barsad is off as he has been for the past week, preoccupied with his finals, so Bane sets the old, cow-shaped egg timer to remind himself about the sourdough, dusts his hands uselessly, and goes to attend the counter. 

The customer is browsing the display case that runs along two walls. The product there is quite good—Bane wouldn’t sell it otherwise—but the morning’s fresh-baked wares are mostly still in their trays on the three, tall cooling racks closer to Bane. He hasn’t gotten around to sorting them into the cases and rotating out yesterday’s breads. Barsad would not be impressed.

Bane clears his throat, leaning heavily on the counter, and promptly forgets what he meant to say when the customer turns.

He’s striking. Clean, slender but obviously strong, standing back-straight and chest-out in crisp Air Force dress blues. In the face of the young officer’s regulation lines, the flour coating Bane like a second skin begins to itch with a vengeance. 

Bane firmly reminds himself that he’s not fifteen years old, thanks his god and a half-dozen others that his nephew isn’t here to witness this, and points to the cooling racks. “Everything there freshly made this morning.” He says. Was. Everything there _was_. Oh god.

“Oh, thanks.” The customer says with brevity. But he goes to the racks.

Bane comes around the counter to shuffle the day’s wares into their proper places while it’s on his mind. He keeps his eyes carefully averted as he walks the trays back and forth, stacking cleared ones to the side, before he thinks that might be just as conspicuous and darts a glance towards the officer. 

The young man is straining to see the uppermost trays without going up on his toes. The rack is seven foot tall. Bane makes a noise to betray his approach, and pulls the highest two down to present them. The officer flashes him a smile. 

One tray is of cheese danishes; the other is of glazed croissants with his mother’s creme filling recipe. They would’ve been some of the last to be baked and added to the rack, as Bane is typically more lazy than organized when it comes to the cooling racks and adds from the middle.

The customer looks up from considering the trays. “Which would you suggest?” He asks. 

Bane immediately holds up the tray of croissants. The danish recipe is essentially the same as every other baker’s in town, and good, but it would never touch any recipe of his mother’s. 

“I don’t know,” the customer says sociably. “will it get me through the day? That one is bigger.” He points to the danishes.

Bane scoffs. “Trust me, you won’t be hungry till dinnertime.”

The customer smiles and looks about to speak, when the egg timer goes off in the back. Bane swears and sets the trays down on the counter. “One moment.” He thought to say before running to the back.

By the time he’s attended to the sourdough, rotated the next batch into the oven, and remembered he had a customer, the young man has left. Bane deflates a little, but sees the previously full tray of croissants is short one. Between the trays is seven dollars and a hastily scribbled note: ‘Work—Sry if this doesn’t cover it, call 587-0097 if not’. 

Bemused, maybe a little giddy, Bane makes change—the croissant being only $1.87 with sales tax—and tucks the $5.13 in an envelope that he writes ‘Air Force’ on the back of. He props it between the register and a stack of free calendars and, after a self-conscious look around, puts the note in his pocket. 

Then he rolls his eyes at himself and orders himself back to the kitchen.

—

Barsad is back briefly for the slowest shift of the day, more to help Bane close than anything. He sits on a bucket in cool corner of the kitchen, heels propped up on the second shelf of the rolling cart and his advanced sociology textbook open in his lap. Bane gave up on telling him not to put his shoes on the equipment years ago; there have been standing orders to scramble to attention at the first sign of anyone not-Bane coming into the back since October 2006.

“What’s with the envelope by the register?” He asks. “Donations?”

“To the military?” Bane says doubtfully, on his knees to wipe down a lower oven. It’s little used and only needs a perfunctory cleaning, thank god. “Customer rushed out, left too much money for what he took. It’s his change.”

“You left a customer alone up front?” Barsard says.

“The sourdough was burning.”

“‘Course, the sourdough.” Barsad says sarcastically. “And when someone robs us it’ll be—never mind, whatever.”

“Respect your elders.” Bane says gruffly as he rises off his knees. One pops loudly. He rubs it placatingly. “Are you here to help me close or tease your dear mother’s brother? Get your ass off my mop bucket.”

Barsad does, grumbling, and Bane catches him in a playful headlock as he passes.

*

Bane is still covered in flour on Monday. He wouldn’t be very surprised if some of it was _same_ flour.

Air Force isn’t in uniform though. He sneaks in unrecognized at the end of a spurt of custom, and is a dim awareness of ‘customer; in the corner; hasn’t paid’ in Bane’s mind as he rings up a pair of office women. It’s not yet noon, but the racks have been unburdened and rolled to the side by Barsad hours ago. 

Barsad, who has gone around the block to buy their lunch. He’ll take too long; the cute brunet he likes usually works on Monday.

Bane thinks he must have done something very pleasing to his god, when Air Force turns and Bane sees his face, for the gift of Melody Chin at Andy’s Diner.

Air Force grins ‘hello’ and holds up a glazed croissant. He looks quickly back to the case and picks up a sugar horn before coming to the counter, where he looks rueful.

“Sorry about last week, I was gonna be late—I never do that, I swear—“ 

Mutely, Bane holds out the envelope. He’s tried not to mess with it too much, he really has, but the one corner is rather worried looking. 

Air Force stops, confused and holding the other side of the envelope, having obligingly taken it. “I haven’t just been handed a summons, have I?” He jokes weakly.

Bane shakes his head. “Your change. Unless” he nods at the little wax sleeves of pastries in Air Force’s hand. “you want to use it now.”

The young man looks down as if he’d forgotten. “I—oh, yeah, sure. That works.”

Bane takes back the envelope—belatedly realizing he’d never released it—and rings the order through the register, leaving the envelope on the open drawer. He drops the sugar horn into a paper bag, and pauses with the croissant in hand.

“This isn’t the same one as before.” He says.

Air Force colors a little. “It isn’t?”

He shakes his head ‘no’. “Lemon creme filling instead of chocolate.” And—without thinking—he takes it out of the wax paper and breaks it in two. 

Then he freezes, almost too exasperated to be embarrassed, because it’s not like he’d needed to _prove it_. Mentally occupied with haranguing himself, he holds out one half thoughtlessly. 

Air Force takes it from his fingers and takes a strategic bite of the center. Filling spills over the sides of his mouth, and he licks his lips. 

He grins. “Just as amazing though.”

“I alternate the filling.” Bane says dumbly.

“You bake everything?” Air Force says around a second bite. Then he winces. “I mean, of course you do, you’re—“ He looks at Bane’s apron (thankfully clean, not the one stained with cake icing), the flour coating his forearms and in the creases of his hands. He scratches his nose awkwardly and glances at the walls of display cases.

“Well, maybe not everything. It’s a lot for one guy, I suppose…”

“No, I bake everything.”

“Every—wow.” Air Force looks impressed. 

Bane does not allow himself to puff up like a proud pigeon. Pigeon-brained, more like. He gestures with the second half of croissant. “I’ll get you another one.” He says, but Air Force moves first. 

“No, I’ll grab it.” 

Leaving the sticker pastry on its wax sleeve on the countertop, Bane busies himself with the neglected envelope. Air Force drops the new croissant into the bag.

“Dollar thirteen.” Bane says, depositing said amount into Air Force’s instinctively raised hand. 

Air Force blinks. “Oh yeah—change. I forgot…No wonder you didn’t call.” He says, before taking his bag with a quick grin and, as an afterthought, a business card from the holder. “Thanks!”

Bane stands at the counter until Barsad returns, some time after Air Force had gone out of sight from the store windows. He sets a bag of food—gone cold, Bane expects—on the counter and picks up the piece of croissant. 

“What’s this?” He says, turning it over.

Bane snatches the bag of burgers and goes back into the kitchen. “Nothing.”

—

Air Force doesn’t make another appearance for the rest of the week, and gradually Bane begins to feel like less of a putz. He stops ‘forgetting’ to take the ‘Work—sry’ note out of his pocket (instead leaving it under the cash drawer), and only remembers the sight of that off-white creme dotting the side of Air Force’s mouth a little. Never at work. Once. Once at work, just for a minute.

Friday, Bane has an asthma attack. 

“You missed a breathing treatment, didn’t you.” Talia accuses him. 

Bane looks at her balefully over the edge of his oxygen mask.

She resettles pointedly in the hard plastic chair, sighing for further emphasize.

“I’m sorry you chose to leave work to check on me in the hospital.” Bane says with false sincerity. 

Talia glares, but her shoulders drop in partial surrender. 

“I don’t suppose you know how Barsad’s doing alone,” Ban ventured cautiously. 

They came right back up.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. Bane, the bakery will be okay while you take an hour to recover from a _severe asthma attack_.”

Bane scowls. “I hadn’t finished the day’s stock, and Barsad—“

"I'll have you sedated, brother. Barsad has worked at the store since he was sixteen. He’s _fine_.”

Bane surrendered the point. Reluctantly. 

On the way out of the hospital Talia unfortunately remembers his back, and forces him to schedule a check-up.

“They’ll only give me more meds.” Bane says irritably, with an apologetic look to the secretary.

“I don’t care. Maybe there’s some magical new kind of physical therapy.” Talia leans with her back to the high counter, looking over the waiting room. She scowls. “It’s not right for you to be in so much pain all the time, this is the 21st century for chrissakes.”

Bane rolls his eyes and takes the appointment reminder card from the secretary.

*

The shop is fine.

Talia keeps her claws in him for the rest of the day, and only drops him off when Barsad blows up both of their phones, demanding to know if he’s supposed to close up on his own. 

So it’s dark when Bane arrives, and he has to let himself in the front with his key, but the shop is fine. Barsad is checking the drawer against the register’s report, and doesn’t look up. Dutifully, he begins to rattle of the State of the Bakery Address. 

“I finished off the dough for the rolls and folded the eclairs, but only half of them got filled. There wasn’t really an issue with the stock, once I told people what happened. Except one guy—I think it was the Air Force dude, by the way—wanted a croissant you hadn’t made before, you know. The envelope for him wasn’t there, though.”

Bane’s gone a little light-headed. “I gave it to him already. Did he get find something else he wanted?”

“Oh. And yeah, a couple of muffins I think. Or was that…Well, regardless, yes.”

Bane grunts to hide his disappointment at missing him and is turning to see what mess Barsad has made of his kitchen in his absence, when he suddenly thinks, “How did you know it was the Air Force guy?”

Frantically, he tries to remember if he may have betrayed his little crush in the past weeks. 

Barsad is shuffling the credit card receipts into a neat stack. “What? Oh, he was wearing an AFA shirt. And his card was Air Force something something.”

A card? That was new. “He paid with a credit card?”

Oops. He’s shown too much interest. Barsad looks up now, eyes narrowing with suspicion. Bane’s being almost twenty years his nephew’s senior has never protected him from the occasional ribbing. 

“Yes…” Barsad says slowly, eyes bright.

Bane does retreat to the kitchen this time, and starts screaming about the state of it to cover up anything Barsard might say.

*

Bane has never felt like a stalker for reading someone’s name off their bank card or receipt before. Than again, he’s never gone digging through the day’s pile before.

John Blake. He’s never actually liked the name Blake, but he can forgive Air Force for it. John.

Bane shivers and then feels like a sappy idiot. He puts the receipts away, finishes sorting the aging, unpurchased product into boxes for donation, turns off the lights, and goes home.

*

6:30 AM. Saturday. Closed. So very, very closed.

Bane doesn’t recognize the knocking on the door for what it is until the start of the third repetition. He strains to hear over the noise of the equipment around him, finally dropping his icing bag and going to stand in the doorway. 

Yep. Knocking. On the storefront window.

He checks the time again to be sure he’d read it correctly, though of course he had. Barsad’s not being in yet is further evidence of the ungodly hour.

(Sometimes he laughs about the fact that he regularly gets up at four in the morning, yet is still scandalized by others keeping early hours. But it’s _Saturday_.)

Bane wipes most of the red cake icing on his hands off on his apron, and goes to attend to the misguided soul leaving fingerprints on his window. He still hasn’t decided whether he’s going to be the good, gracious business owner or run the would-be customer off (also graciously), when he’s greeted by the sight of none other than Air Force, a.k.a. John Blake, peering into the dark store.

He brightens flatteringly upon spotting Bane, points apologetically at the posted hours, and shrugs. 

Bane tries to scrub off the rest of the icing, with no more success.

John gives a wincing smile as Bane unlocks the door. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I just wanted to drop this by—“ With a shy grin, he produces a little stuffed bear wearing a blue ‘GET WELL SOON!’ t-shirt and clutching a few springs of garlic blossoms from behind his back.

Bane stares down at it, bemused, and reaches out to take it when John holds it out.

“….Thank you.” He says.

John nods it away. “I’m John, by the way.” He extends a hand to shake, which Bane takes. His own mitt swallows it up.

He remembers to stop himself from replying, _I know_. “Bane.”

“Bane Family Bakery.” John says with a little grin, eyes darting to the awning he stands beneath, though the lettering is out of sight.

Bane snorts. “That’s me. Us.” He frowns, considering Barsad’s involvement and his mother’s previous work. “Kind of.” He looks at the teddy bear.

It’s little beady eyes are crooked, and Bane feels like it’s judging him unfavorably. He makes a face at it. A teeny one. Very restrained. Blake probably didn’t see.

Bane realizes he may have allowed the comfortable silence to drawn on to awkward lengths. 

“Do you—want to come in?” He gestures at the dark shop behind him.

John grimaces. “I would, but I’ve got to get to work. I’ll come by later though.”

“I’ll have the croissants ready for you.” Bane says, with what he hopes isn’t a terribly dopey smile.

John pauses in turning away, his hands busy flipping the collar of his coat up against the chill. He smiles back before going.

Bane watches him cross the street, until he turns the corner, before locking the door again. He sticks his tongue out at the bear as he steals its blossoms.

The bear he stuffs under his coat, where Barsad (probably) won’t see it. As for the flowers, he tracks down a little plastic vase and throws out the fake yellow carnations in it. He puts the garlic blossoms beside the register, and goes whistling back to work.

—

The next time Bane sees John Blake is over a week later.

“Bane?” Barsad calls from the front. “Uhh. Air Force guy keeps walking past our window.”

Bane drops a tray of black and white cookies and runs into the sink with his hip. “What?” He calls back.

“I swear he’s passed like six times in the past ten minutes.” Barsad pokes his head into the kitchen.

Bane is bracing himself to kneel automatically, intent on the poor cookies that were dropped to the ground. He stops mid-bend.

“Get these, will you?” He says dimly, pulling the wipe rag from his apron belt and tossing it down. Barsad treats him to a curious face as they pass each other.

Sure enough. Blake paces past twice as he watches. He glances up and into the bakery on the third pass. Seeing Bane, he blanches.

The bell tinkles over the door. 

“I only have three minutes.” Blake says. “I’m actually kind of already late, but I—Look, you’re really hard to read, but I mean I gave you a teddy bear so—I—Do you want to go out sometime? Get a steak, or coffee?”

Bane blinks.

Blake shuffles from foot to foot, hands digging in his pockets. “If you’re not into that, no big deal man, I’ll go.”

Bane finds his voice only when Blake heaves a frustrated sigh.

“Wait. Sorry. I would very much like to.” Go out. To go out. 

“Really?” Blake says, brightening slowly, cautiously. 

Bane’s mouth twitches. “Yes.”

He can hear Barsad’s snorting laughter from the kitchen, but he can’t bring himself to mind. Blake is still smiling. That’s more important. 

“I…I wasn’t sure. You play it pretty close to the chest, Bane.”

Bane’s heart skips an excited beat. “John.” He says, because he’s been given permission, and smiles stupidly.

*

Two weeks and a date and half later, John Blake knocks on the window at Stupid O’clock AM. This time he’s armed with, rather than a teddy, a bag of biscuits and hash browns. Bane surfaces from the kitchen to let him in.

He holds out the bag, but doesn’t let go when Bane takes it. Rather, he turns his face up and looks slyly expectant. 

“‘Thank you, John’?”

Bane kisses above his eye and on his cheek, humming agreeably, before dutifully landing a peck on his mouth. 

“Thank you, John. The croissants are ready, by the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened less than a day after I had a 'not everything needs a coffeehouse AU!!' rant. It's different though. It's a bakery AU.


End file.
